Kindness is a virtue neither modern nor urban. One almost unlearns it in a city. Towns have their own beatitude; they are not unfr...iendly; they offer a vast and solacing anonymity or an equally vast and solacing gregariousness. But one needs a neighbor on whom to practice compassion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Do not be discouraged, if in a thousand instances you find your kindness rejected and wronged, your good evil-spoken of, and the h...and you extend for the relief of others, cast insultingly away; the benevolence which cannot outlive these trials of its purity and strength, is not like the self-sacrifice of him, who went about doing good.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The more one knows of our life the more one must denounce it, lest it be suspected that one has a personal motive in defending it.... When other women speak of us you must assume an attitude of scorn, not only to protect yourself from suspicion, but that you may also feel it for yourself and have no temptation to return. When you think of us do not remember any small kindness that we may have shown you or that we show to one another. Remember only the things that have shocked you and outraged your traditions and your sense of decency. Remember your sufferings at the hands of beasts who are miscalled men. If you keep these things in view you will never again fall into temptation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

After which you led me to waterAnd bade me drink, which I did, owing to your kindness....You would not let me out for two days and three nights,Bringing me books bound in wild thyme and scented wild grassesAs if reading had any interest for me ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

If you have ever watched an artist constructing with bits of cold stone a beautiful living picture you know that he works faithful...ly and carefully on the pattern from the wrong side and while he is working every inequality, every tint a little too dull is apparent to him as his picture grows, but he works on and on. And even when he finishes at last and looks down at the completed pattern he is not discouraged to see here a little crevice and there a little roughness, an open seam here, a tiny patch there where the bit of marble was too small. Now he pours his cement over it and smoothes [sic] it into every seam, and with faith puts his work to dry. Next day the pattern is turned and the perfect whole is given to view, needing only the polishing of a loving hand to make it ready to slip in place. So we should work faithfully on our pattern, cement it together with ourselves, and polish it with human kindness; and lo! the work slips into place seemingly a perfect whole.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »